The short, 270-mph life of Hitler's four-wheeled hero

Bernd Rosemeyer died 75 years ago today. His career, sponsored by the Nazi propaganda machine, was legendary.

Most Read

On January 28th, 1938, German race driver and national hero Bernd Rosemeyer was killed, thrown from his Auto Union streamliner after it careened off a section of closed-off Autobahn. He was traveling somewhere in the neighborhood of 270 mph, on a public road, in winds high enough to be a danger at half that speed. He was 29. On the anniversary of Rosemeyer's extraordinary death, it's worth taking a quick look at his equally extraordinary life.

Consider the speed at which Rosemeyer died. Modern Formula 1 cars—the fastest and most technologically advanced automobiles on earth—don't go 270 mph. The fastest F1 tracks offer speeds around 200 mph, similar to what you'll find at Le Mans or Talladega. In 2005, a specially prepared BAR Honda F1 car went 256 mph through a speed trap at an airport in the Mojave desert. That's real accomplishment, born from hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars of investment in aerodynamic research. In Bernd Rosemeyer's 1938, aerodynamic technology was little more than luck coaxed from the rough hands of a man with a hammer.

It was Ferdinand Porsche who made Rosemeyer's Auto Union so effective. The car's 545-horsepower V-16 was his design, as was the limited-slip differential that helped transfer the engine's massive torque to the ground. Both car and engine were an outgrowth of the Mercedes-Benz/Auto Union Grand Prix wars, where the German state sponsored the period's equivalent of Formula 1 racing as a work of propaganda. The car that Rosemeyer died in was essentially a Grand Prix car with a slippery, top-speed-oriented body. It weighed less than 2,010 pounds and was roughly the size of a 1970s station wagon.

Rosemeyer was a natural. He came to car racing from motorcycle road racing, a sport he dominated at a young age. He never underwent an automotive apprenticeship, instead somehow catapulting straight into the seat of the quickest and most challenging car of the day. Auto Union was lucky to have him. It was joked at the time that his inexperience in other race cars made him unaware of any quirks in the machines that he quickly mastered.

With his remarkable ascent, Rosemeyer's story took on a fairytale quality. When combined with relentless hype from the Nazi propaganda machine, his fearlessness and charm made him a media sensation. When he married the famous German aviatrix Elly Beinhorn in 1936, the country went nuts. Thanks to a flush of Grand Prix successes—including a win at Donington in England and landing the Vanderbilt Cup in America—his fame soon transferred overseas.

The car that Rosemeyer died in would terrify any right-minded individual. Its long, low bodywork was developed in wind tunnels—one of the first automotive applications of the technology—with drag reduction paramount. The wheels were enveloped, as was the driver, and it took time and tools to remove a man from the cockpit at the end of a speed run. Noxious fumes and exhaust could easily get trapped in the interior. And while the car was tuned for high speed, it was developed during a period where aerodynamics were more black art than science—at the time of his death, Rosemeyer himself was just slightly older than manned flight.

The exact events surrounding Rosemeyer's death aren't known, though it's widely believed that his accident came following a loss of control in a crosswind. His car flipped through the air, divesting itself of his body and coming to rest some distance
from the road. A sturdy monument marks the spot today, just off the modern A5 Autobahn, near Frankfurt.

Bernd Rosemeyer earned his fame during a tumultuous time. He was genuinely larger than life, a good-humored individual reveling in outsized risk and counting on his extraordinary talent to pull him through. And while he was made a success and a propaganda tool by the Nazis, he good-naturedly thumbed his nose at them in public. We'll never know what would have become of him had he lived to see the postwar era, but for now, just give thanks that he existed at all. Men like this don't come along that often, and for better or worse, they rarely stick around.